Today, Apple announced that it has extended the date of when all applications available in the Mac App Store are required to make use of "sandboxing" technology to June 1, 2012. Sandboxing is a technology that essentially keeps every app inside of its own little "space" on a user's hard drive, and it is not allowed to access any other user files. It adds a second layer of protection against possible compromised apps, making sure that they wouldn't affect any entire system.

The technology, however, takes quite a while to integrate into apps, and brings into question a number of features that may have to be removed. Apple previously set a deadline for all apps to use sandboxing in November of last year, but this was later delayed to March 1 and delayed again today.

We have extended the deadline for sandboxing your apps on the Mac App Store from March 1st to June 1st to provide you with enough time to take advantage of new sandboxing entitlements available in OS X 10.7.3 and new APIs in Xcode 4.3. Get more details about sandboxing your app and find answers to FAQs.

Developers have made their voices heard, informing Apple that there are still questions on how sandboxing should be implemented properly.